Bodleian Libraries offer Visiting Fellowships in 2015-16

29 January 2015

With the generous support of donors, the Bodleian Libraries are able to offer 18 Visiting Fellowships supporting research visits to use the collections in 2015-16.

Fellows work on their own projects and also contribute to intellectual exchanges within the Bodleian Libraries and the University. The call for applications for Fellowships in 2015-16 is now open, and details are available on the Centre for the Study of the Book website.

This year the Libraries offer fellowships for scholars researching the history of science, architecture, early modern history, music, Persian manuscripts, and 18th-century studies.

The Libraries will be welcoming Fellows to the Visiting Scholars' Centre in the Weston Library, currently the academic home of scholars studying the Library's Special Collections of rare books, manuscripts, photographs and paintings.

The Visiting Scholars' Centre, a specially-designed area at the heart of the new Weston Library, has been planned to nurture an interdisciplinary research community. It is ideally placed for visiting scholars to consult not only the Bodleian's Special Collections but academics and expert curatorial staff whose knowledge can support their research.

Two new Fellowships are announced for 2015-16. The Bahari Fellowships are dedicated to supporting research in the Persian arts of the book. The Bodleian's Persian collections date back to the very beginning of the 17th century and consist of around 2,500 manuscript codices containing about 5,000 works in all classical disciplines. Particularly well represented are Histories, Biographies, and Classical Persian Poetry. The collection of illustrated manuscripts containing miniatures is world class.

The Albi Rosenthal Fellowships remember the benefactor whose collection strengthened the Bodleian's music holdings by the donation of 87 first and early editions of Mozart's works. In recent years, the Bodleian has been exceptionally fortunate in its major acquisitions, including the M Deneke Mendelssohn Collection, which led to the Bodleian becoming one of two principal centres for Mendelssohn research; the music library of St Michael's College Tenbury, including Handel's own conducting score of Messiah; and Alan Tyson's first editions of works by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert.